BY TREVOR KUPFER“Don’t fix the women. Fix the structure.”Pat Gillette is passionate about diversity. Shespeaks on the topic at about 40 events per year;and in 2006, she founded the Opt-In Project,bringing leaders from various industries to discusshow they were retaining and promoting women, sotheir strategies could be applied to law firms. Shewas also on the ABA Commission on Women in theProfession and co-chair of the San Francisco BarAssociation’s No Glass Ceiling Initiative.

The Opt-In Project’s case study of law firmsobserved, among other things, that rethinking com-pensation formulas and the ways people are mea-sured and rewarded could help prevent attrition.

Not everyone has always agreed with her mes-sage: “When I first went out and started talkingabout the Opt-In Project, I got booed off the stageby people. I had a guy who’s the chair of a majorfirm stand up in a room with 1 00 people and say,‘Why should I care about this? I’ve got 100 whitemales I can hire any day. Why should I care aboutdiversity?’ And he wasn’t joking. This was in 2008.”She adds, “It’s not that [women] aren’t capable;it’s that they’re not being given the opportunity—because white men are making the decisions.”Now a mediator at JAMS and a frequent keynotespeaker, Gillette worked as an employment lawyerfor more than 40 years, watching as corporationsmade more progress toward diversity than lawfirms. According to a 2015 National Associationof Women Lawyers’ survey, women account for 18percent of equity partners at law firms; lawyers ofcolor 8 percent—less than a third of them female—and LGBT lawyers 2 percent.

“We’re risk-averse; we don’t like change,” Gil-lette says of the legal industry. “We call people‘non-lawyers.’ We don’t have non-CEOs or non-physicians, but we have non-lawyers, and whatthat tells you about lawyers, in my opinion, isarrogance. We think we’re different from everybodyelse and nobody could possibly understand theTo turn away women and minorities from lead-ership roles is to exclude 50 percent of law schoolgraduates—not to mention their ideas. “Decisionsthat are made by diverse groups, and businessesthat are run by diverse populations, are far moresuccessful than those run by people of the samegender and background,” Gillette says.

Though some firms are on the front lines of
promoting diversity, many have added women and
minorities to “look good on paper,” she says. And
at some firms, Gillette suspects “the two-seater
mentality” comes into play in leadership roles.

“There are two seats that are available—sortof like the Supreme Court. When the black judgeretires, you put a black judge in that seat, but youdon’t ever consider putting a black guy in after awhite guy retires. That is typical of most law firms:‘ We do have diversity because we have one womanon our executive committee,’ or: ‘ We have twoGillette also has a message for associates: “Say,‘ We want power. We don’t want to just talk aboutwork-life balance. We understand how the financesof the firm work. We understand how you generatebusiness. We understand what it means to be aShe sees reasons for hope. “Clients are really

Patricia K. GilletteJAMSALTERNATE DISPUTERESOLUTION;EMPLOYMENTLITIGATION: DEFENSESAN FRANCISCOPartners at U.S. Law FirmsSource: The National Association for Law Placement(2016 Report on Diversity in U.S. Law Firms)201020122014201619.43% women 6.16% minority19.91% women 6.71% minority21.05% women 7.33% minority22.13% women 8.05% minority